What was going on when I was born?

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the United States had a moral obligation not to allow concerns over human rights violations in El Salvador to lead to abandonment of that nation to ''a brutal military takeover by a totalitarian minority.'' In a wide-ranging defense of the Administration's policy in Central America, Mr. Shultz said it was crucial that Congress restore the military aid it had cut for El Salvador and thus create a ''shield'' behind which free elections and economic development can occur. 'Depends on the Congress' ''Whether we will be able to help provide this shield in time depends on the Congress,'' Mr. Shultz said in a speech in Dallas to that city's World Affairs Council and Chamber of Commerce. ''In the middle of a war, the Congress has cut security assistance by twothirds below the previous fiscal year. Here you are in the army and you're fighting, and all of a sudden the flow you need is cut by twothirds and people ask, how come the army isn't doing so well.''

Production at the nation's factories and mines rose 1.1 percent in March, the Federal Reserve Board reported today. Government economists said the figure was the most encouraging signal so far that the long-awaited economic recovery is well under way. Industrial production has now risen for four consecutive months, including a 1.5 percent increase in January and a rise of threetenths of 1 percent in February. The January figure was revised in the latest report, from a rise of nine-tenths of 1 percent reported earlier.

The area around Indian Point is not prepared for a possible accident at the nuclear reactors there, and the safety of the 288,000 people living within 10 miles of the plants cannot be assured, a Federal agency said in a report issued yesterday. ''At this time, I cannot assure that public health and safety can be protected in the 10-mile emergency planning zone around Indian Point,'' said Frank P. Petrone, regional director of the group that issued the report, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The two Indian Point plants in operation are run by Consolidated Edison and the Power Authority of the State of New York. The plants are in Westchester County, in the town of Buchanan, on the east bank of the Hudson River, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan.

Mayor Koch, who had planned last December to lay off as many as 6,600 workers before June 1984 to balance the city's next budget, said yesterday that virtually no layoffs would be necessary. He made his comments at a City Hall news conference called to announce that he had reversed his plan to allow the Police Department to be reduced by 1,800 officers through attrition. Instead, Mr. Koch said yesterday, he will replace the 1,800 who are expected to resign or retire and add 700 in the year that begins July 1. The department will have 24,095 officers by July, and 24,795 a year later, according to Police Commissioner Robert J. McGuire.

Union leaders agreed today to end a strike against the Metro-North Commuter Railroad in New York, and the management said it hoped to have commuter trains running Monday. After six weeks of a strike that has shut down the railroad for 90,000 riders, the management and the leaders of the union agreed to submit unresolved issues, chiefly relating to the size of train crews, to arbitration. The arbitrater's decision would be binding on both sides.

Mexico expelled a top Nicaraguan opposition leader today after barring him from declaring a ''new war of liberation'' against the Nicaraguan Government. The opposition leader, Alfonso Robelo Callejas, was to have delivered a declaration written by Eden Pastora Gomez, the popular Nicaraguan revolutionary leader who turned against the Sandinists and went into exile in 1981. In his letter, which bore a return address of the ''Mountains of Nicaragua,'' Mr. Pastora said he had abandoned hopes for a political settlement with the Sandinist Government and was ''entering the armed struggle. He warned that the Cuban advisers who have helped the Sandinist Government ''must leave this sacred soil at the latest within 15 days or they will end up like all who have dared to intervene here: expelled or dead.''

Near the bank of the Sabine Pass, Morris Hearnsberger glanced at the Gulf of Mexico with frustration. Here, where the Sabine River separates Texas from Louisiana and flows quietly into the Gulf, a monstrous formation of tubular steel has sprung up like the skyline of a new city. ''It's a fearful sight,'' said the 48-year-old oilman, whose company, the H.M. Production Company, provides services to offshore oil and gas wells. ''If those things don't get to work, it's going to put us all under.'' Mr. Hearnsberger was talking about offshore oil drilling rigs that have been mothballed. This week, there were 22 of them stacked in the Sabine Pass, some towering 300 feet and costing their owners $6,000 a day in maintenance costs and interest payments.

For two decades officials representing a group of select Eastern colleges have met privately to insure that a student seeking financial aid was offered roughly the same amount by each school. ''Some people tease us and say it's price fixing, but it's not,'' said Amy Nychis, director of financial aid at Wellesley, where officials of 23 schools met last week. ''The basic purpose is to give students and their parents the freedom of choice to go to the school they really want and not to pick because one school offers them more aid than another.'' Another purpose, some college officials acknowledge, is to help the schools stretch their financial aid budgets and avoid possible bidding wars over the most attractive students.

The British adventurer David Hempleman-Adams's attempt to become the first man to walk alone to the North Pole has failed. The crew at his base camp decided to abandon the trek because the 26-year-old mountaineer from Bristol had been plagued by cracked ribs and bad weather.

The Administration's ability to persuade Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian forces to leave Lebanon will be seen in the Arab world as a test of American diplomatic strength, according to Sultan Qabus bin Said of Oman. The Sultan, who is visiting Washington for talks with Adminsitration officials, said in an interview that President Reagan's peace plan for the Middle East was still alive but that he had advised the President and Secretary of State George P. Shultz to take a different approach. The United States, he said, should speak directly to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and ''not to people who failed to take the opportunity'' offered by the Reagan program. Until now, the Sultan stressed, the people have been ''unable to speak, meet or elect leaders they trust'' because of ''the gun behind their neck.'' As an example of this pressure he cited the murder of Dr. Issam Sartawi, the Palestine Liberation Organization's chief contact with Israeli moderates.

Sound is an intrusion here. Even wind can only whistle if it has something to rush through or swirl around, and this icescape is usually devoid of objects and beings. Now, this has temporarily changed as 400 tons of supplies and about three dozen human beings have settled here in an expedition sponsored by the Canadian Government to study the Alpha Ridge, a mountain chain below the ice and the water. And now there are visitors to conspire with the wind to make and register noise. There is the flapping of tents, and the hum of diesel-fed generators supplying electricity. There is the drone of helicopters and @skimobiles that in the thick cold air carries for many miles. And there is the rich tympanic crunch of footfalls resonating from the six-to-nine-foot-thick ice that covers the ocean like a drumhead. Walking provides the percussion for the wind.

Opposition groups called today for the removal of American bases from the Philippines and the expulsion of the United States Ambassador and a top aide on charges of meddling in Philippine affairs. Otherwise, they said, there will be a violent anti-American backlash in the Philippines.